Never ones to shirk their New Year responsibilities, glowering post-punk experts DESPERATE JOURNALIST launched themselves out of the 2018 traps with a brand new single release called ‘It Gets Better’ and a brace of shows which will saw them race from a giant underplay at The Old Blue Last to Bognor Butlin’s for the Rockaway Beach festival on a frenzied Friday night.

A fulsome year on from the timely alt.pop meltdown of ‘Resolution’ and the appearance of second album ‘Grow Up’ the crunchy quartet – comprised of Jo Bevan (vox), Rob Hardy (guitar), Simon Drowner (bass) and Caz Hellbent (drums) – are now releasing a brand new EP called ‘You Get Used To It’ on March 30th and touring Germany and the UK, including a headline show at Oslo in Hackney on April 20th – full dates below.

Culled from the ‘Grow Up’ album sessions which took place at Dean Street studios in Soho Village in the comfy company of Keith Top Of The Pops, the ‘You Get Used To It’ EP extends to both ends of the Desp J spectrum, with the brazenly nifty ‘Nothing Happens’ and ‘About You’ powered along by clanging guitar and crashing drums, while ‘The Bomb’ and ‘Incandescent’ are sultrier and expansive, both breaking the five minute barrier.

The ‘It Gets Better’ single meanwhile is Smiths-esque salty shakiness to the max, all savage 12 string Rickenbackering and lovely gothic bass haranguing and all wrapped up in 2 manic minutes and 49 frazzled seconds.

“The song is about feeling stuck in a place of adolescent anxiety,” explains singer Jo. “I have very vague memories of my teenage years because I kind of shot through them tightly balled up in a fist of self-loathing and despair, and the words are evocations of the little moments of history which randomly recall flashes of from time to time. As it happens, things did get better for me and I am much more content now generally speaking, but the song comes from the perspective of the nihilistic kid who can’t believe that their angst will fade, that the acuteness of their misery is temporary.”

In the meantime, here are some nice things people some cute people said about the ‘Grow Up’ opus:

‘Desperate Journalist are hammering their flag into the icy terrain of the epic end of post-punk (The Cure) and modern indie rock (Arcade Fire), and 'Grow Up' is a personal diary magnified to the scale of an IMAX screen'. - Q Magazine 4/5

'Bigger, better, more expansive and fresher, while their collective deportment has something of a swagger about it.' - The Quietus